Is it Saveable?

[cjtmacclassic]

Ok, so it turns out that my uncle has an old apple II that's been sitting in the back yard with no protection from the environment for about 3 years. what i want to know is:
a: is it possible to rescue, and,
b: what type of damage will it have and what will I need to fix it?

(sorry if this is frowned upon, this was the best place I know of to post this.)

[johnklos]

If you can clean it out very well, there's no good reason it shouldn't be savable. The moving parts in the floppy drive(s) are probably going to require the most work. Take it apart and see what it looks like.

[H3NRY]

If it's been rained on for several years, chances are the power supply has internal corrosion and the chip sockets on the mainboard will be oxidized and corroded. It may be salvageable by a good take-apart and cleanup, it may not. Since none of us can see the machine, we can't guess what the elements have done to it. If there's rust or white powdery stuff around the chips, that's not good. Check it out and let us know what you find.

[Nathan]

Make sure to take some good pictures, that might help the people here get an idea what you're dealing with. Unless there is damage to the circuit, everything is probably fixable or replaceable as long as it is not some kind of custom IC (very unlikely that there any such chips in there). Don't turn it on before you're sure it's absolutely clean or something might short or break.

[cjtmacclassic]

ok, but it'll be about 2 weeks before i can take a look at it, as the machine is in Missouri and I am in California. My uncle called and told me about what he'd found, but as he's not a collector of such things he said he wanted to give it to me

*edit*
I'll also take lots of pictures! (although not very high quality what with me only having a 6MP kodak)

[Gorgonops]

If it's been outdoors in Missouri for three years I wouldn't recommend getting your hopes up. *Everything* is likely to be badly oxidized, and if any standing water made it into the case there's probably a thick coating of organic slime on anything it touched. (This is the South we're talking about.)

Pretty much your only chance will be to take it completely apart, scrub it as clean as you can, and check the board for serious corrosion or pitting. If by some miracle it looks intact then you can try preemptively replacing every electrolytic and paper capacitor (they'll all be bad) on the board and firing it up, preferably with a new power supply. Seriously though, you're likely to end up chasing things like rusted shorts inside the expansion slot connectors and under the IC sockets... it's not going to be fun.

[Nathan]

Ah, don't let that get you down, it's worth a try at least. At least you can get some exposure to some computer history. Clean it with distilled water, not tap water, that way you won't have any conductive mineral deposits on the surface. Erasers are good for removing light to moderate corrosion, just clean out the shavings cause they're kinda messy. Also, if you don't know how to use a soldering iron, you might want to find an inexpensive one and play around with soldering stuff together (not in the computer) on the off chance that a socket is too corroded to be usable (and the chip is not, hopefully) and can be replaced. You may also look around for a conductive trace pen, it might help if you need to find out if repairing the traces (if any are damaged) will help (although soldering may then be necessary for best results). Just wait until the machine gets there before you start thinking/worrying about it.

[Bunsen]

Clean it with distilled water, not tap water

If it's really gross, which seems likely, I would suggest hosing it off outside first, removing any and all socketed IC, cards, plugs etc (carefully noting where they came from) then washing it in the dishwasher (no soap, no drying cycle, and no other dishes or food items), then rinse with distilled water to remove any mineral buildup. A final rinse with denatured alcohol may be a good idea too. Then you should be in a position to get a good look at the condition of the board. Leave it to dry in a warm dry spot for at least three or four days, preferably a week before attempting to power it on - water has a way of sneaking into nooks and crannies where you can't see it, even if the board looks completely dry.

[Gorgonops]

The grossest thing I was ever able to salvage myself was a TRS-80 Model I Expansion Interface that had mice living inside of it. I didn't discover the until I'd powered it on and attemped to use the printer port. I got nothing but garbage, and then noticed the "mousy" smell. The "motherboard" inside the Expansion Interface is mounted such that it basically hovers in the middle of a three inch high box, hanging component-side down, and the mice had built a nest on the non-component "upper" side. Their caked urine and filth had shorted several lines on the printer port, producing the symptoms... it's amazing to me that the RAM and disk interface circuitry wasn't also affected. :^b

To make a long story short, the "clean it well with water and alcohol and let it dry completely" drill worked in this case. There was some minor corrosion of the board but it was designed with big fat traces so nothing was actually severed, and luckily the short in the printer port circuitry didn't permanently damage it. However, if the board had been mounted in the case component-side up and the same amount of filth applied to that side I suspect the damage would of been a lot worse. (Besides the chemical damage the mice probably would of chewed up the components themselves.)

I'm *guessing* the places that will cause you the most trouble even if there's not fatal damage to the board itself are the expansion slot connectors and the keyboard. I'm not sure what metal Apple used in the original parts, but I've seen some badly rotted/rusted PC/AT slots on motherboards that were just kept in humid garages, let alone outside. As for the keyboard, if any standing water got into the switches and rusted them out it might be a total loss.

But, hey, hope for the best. If the machine was sitting underneath something else (or upside down) and stayed mostly dry you might have a chance to get it running. If it was face up, half open, and home to a nest of squirrels it... might make a neat birdhouse!

[cjtmacclassic]

I also just remembered I have an ancient book about computers that has a "Rat and Cheese" simulation you can punch in. if it actually works, I'll give it a try and post the results on youtube

[Paralel]

Did you find the actual mice or just the nest?

[Gorgonops]

I'd seen mice in the storage room where the TRS-80 had been kept loosely boxed up, and I had noticed some "poops" in the box... which of course ticked me off and I'd washed off the outside of the unit before setting it up, but I hadn't caught on to the fact they'd actually gotten into it. But, no, I didn't catch the actual perpetrators. :^b

In the end it's probably a good lesson about packing things up *carefully* if you want to keep them safe. You can never know for sure whether vermin might be a problem or not. (Years ago I stayed in a college dorm which had been completely refurbished top-to-bottom only about a year before I was there, and it had a mouse problem... actually cornered and caught one of the little buggers with my bare hands after spotting him emerging from a tiny little hole in the closet. And of course today I live in what appears to be a fairly idyllic suburban neighborhood, and *everybody* has rats in their garages. I've even seen them running along the cable TV lines between the backyards. Haven't tangled with a rat yet myself, and I'm not looking forward to it.) :^b

[Paralel]

I know the lesson of packing thing carefully all too well. I had bins of textbooks/papers from grad school which I stored in a shed in my parents backyard. 3 years later, my parents told me I absolutely had to clean them out and take whatever I wanted with me as anything left behind would be discarded. When I removed the lids I found bins filled with what appeared to be soil at first glance but was actually very well mulched and composted textbooks/papers that had been completely and thoroughly digested by a significant number of large white grubs. Being a biologist by education I was fascinated by these paper-eating grubs that managed to turn a pile of very expensive textbooks into processed and decaying organic matter whose origins were absolutely impossible to discern. Of course, after the fascination wore off, I became incensed at these little fuckers that had destroyed what was easily thousands of dollars in materials. I proceeded to dump the bins out and squish every single last one of them, which I had to clean up once my mother say the incredibly mess that had been made in my rage.

Overall, although costly and annoying, it was a lesson well learned.

[cjtmacclassic]

Instead of hosing it down, could I just use the dishwasher method to clean it like the compacts?

[Bunsen]

Sure, I just suggested the hose in case it had accumulated caked-on mud, grass, worm colonies, dead rats, or anything particularly feral.

[beachycove]

Maybe leaving it sitting outside in the rain for another three years would do the trick!

[cjtmacclassic]

Well, it's been sitting on a wooden table, so I doubt that there'll be rats/worms, plus it's been in an area where he's building his new house so the activity may have scared them off. (At least, I hope so)

[Paralel]

Actually, I find new construction tends to stir otherwise dormant critters up more than anything.